The Trick of the Impact Point with Adam Young

was almost quitting the game. I'm a three handicap, and he said, I watched one of your social posts and it fixed it for me.

it's nice to get a good mix. I probably appreciate a Links course now after not seeing one for many years.

I was like, I'm hooked. Now, I'm in on this. And it took me a while to do anything like that again, but yeah, that really was a hooking situation for me. It really latched me on the golf.

It was. It was crazy, but I absolutely loved it. Any any moment there was light, I would head down to the football field and hit balls until it was dark and then come home and just repeat. On summer's my parents would drop me off at the golf course at seven in the morning and pick me up at when it was dark at ten at night. In Britain, it gets dark, right, was constantly, so I think it's just obsession. And when I wasn't playing, I was thinking

about it as well. I was writing stats like fairways, greens. I was going through imaginary rounds of golf in my head with a notebook, saying, oh I'd done that differently, I would have scored this. Then I'd write down predicted scores like, oh, if I play, if maybe in three years time, when I hit it farther, I would imagine and like hitting to these different spots. Yeah, now I'm saying it out loud. I sound like a crazy person,

but absolutely crazy for golf. And I think when we talk about practice, we often don't talk about the mental part of it, like the rehearsing of swings in your head, you know, just imagining being on the golf course and playing the rounds of golf. Those don't get logged as practice hours, but I believe they they have something to do with improving as well.

current scenarios, and everything in between. And what's interesting is, I'm sure you've heard of a vision board, just like writing down a vision board. I've achieved those things. So my best case scenario is things like, oh, imagine if I hit the ball two hundred and sixty yards and my seven nine goes one hundred and seventy yards, which was crazy at the time when I was writing it, But now all those things have come true. And you know, I play, I think off a plus two right now.

I've been as low as a plus five momentarily. But yeah, these things, you know, you surpass where you think you're going to get to as well.

my local professional he come in. He'd have a completely flexible schedule. He'd come in and just like, I'm going to cross these hours off, and I'm like, this is the life. I want flexible hours. He was earning what I thought at the time was a ton of money as well, and this is this is the life for me. And so yeah, that's kind of where I set my brain is, Okay, I'm going to become a coach. Now.

I was trying to learn golf. I was trying to learn it purely mechanically, mechanically, so you know, I was putting myself into positions and not understanding why if my swing was looking better, why am I not playing better?

Why am I not scoring better? So there was there was a big level of frustration at that point because it's like, well, I'm putting all this hard work in my swing is looking exactly like everybody says it should look, and I'm hitting it worse, so why and no one can explain to me why, and so it's hugely frustrating. Caused me to burn out a little bit. On the competition side, I didn't enjoy it. I still to this

day don't really enjoy competition that much. I love just going out on my own problem solving, figuring it out, competition against myself, trying to improve my own stats, my own game. I love that side of it, right when I'm competing against others and there's a level of lack of control over it. You know, you can't shoot, you can't control whether someone else goes out and shoots a ten. Underpart my brain doesn't like those things as much. And

so I mean, I like a little bit competition. When I go out with the boys, is like, all right, let's play for five bucks, let's make something out of it, and that's enough for me to get, you know, inspired. But you know, once we stop playing for big money, I'm like, I'm not enjoying this now because you hit a good shot and it's like, okay, I should do that.

You hit a bad shot, and then you get upset because it's like it means, it means so much, and it's just I know a lot of people will be like, Okay, that's that's weird to not enjoy competition, and.

as a result of it. So it's more about playing well for me.

You know that it's probably you know, it's a great way to make a living, right if you're good enough. But they might they might be like, oh my god, this is killing me.

mini project at the start of the year. And you know what, the first three months of this year, I hated I hated it, but I had a lot of frustration because now you set this target, you set this goal, and so anytime you make a bogie or something, it's it was really frustrating because it's like that set me back from my goal. Now. So there's this balance. I mean we kind of I am very much a goal setter in life and in golf. I think we need

we need those to drive us. We also have to monitor it and see how it's affecting our motivation, how it's affecting our happiness, because ultimately, what was the goal of golf for a pro It's I need to play good. Happiness is not a relevant factor really if if it's not, if it's a byproduct, are playing good? Great? But you know, for me, I want to enjoy my game, and so I have to balance those things a little bit.

elbow and Tiger's elbow is down a little bit. I realized he had a different physical makeup to me, and I ended up tearing my rod cuff trying to force myself into positions.

you know, I like very definite things. I like someone to say, if you do this, you will get this, And these definits can only really be found in the impact interval. So the impact interval is basically the half inch zero point seventy five of an inch where the club is connected to the ball and during that time, the ball basically receives all this information from the club head and it determines where it flies based on that. So there are things like where did you strike it

on the face. There's ground contact, so did you hit the ground early, not at all, or too far in front? There's face direction, so which orientation is the face pointing more left or more right? There's the path the club is moving, so is the club moving out in or left or right? There's the vertical path as well, which you call attack angle. So is it like an airplane

coming in? Is it traveling down steeply crash landing, or is it very soft touching or is it actually taking off and going up as it hits the ball, which is not a good idea if you're trying to hit the ball off the ground. And then there's a dynamic loft as well, So how much people know what loft is, but how much is applied at impact. So the last one I didn't mention was speed, how fast that clubhead is moving at impact. So those are seven impact factors

and they determine the outcome of the shot. So whenever someone comes to me for a lesson and they say, well I'm having a problem with this my ball is doing this, instantly I can link it to Okay, well what's happening in these seven areas or whittle it down to maybe one or two of those areas, and then we would focus on that in the lesson.

They're so forgiving these days. I mean, it can be the cause of missing a green if it happens too extremely So we hit a toe shank or a heel shank, it's going to shoot off ninety degrees to the right, So you got to watch out for the extremes with that. But yeah, ground contact and face contact are two biggies. In fact, I can lump those two things into one thing.

The other twenty or so percent is face orientation at impact, and then whatever's left ten percent or so is kind of optimizing path, attack angle, dynamic loft, things like that, And people put a lot of stock in that last ten percent, Like most golfers are so obsessed with their club path, and it's like for most golfers, it's more of an optimization factor. It's not the it's not the reason why they're a bad golfer.

going with this thing. But now, you know, I feel like it's just, you know, it keeps me out of having another swing thought.

take it outside. I've got I've got a bunch of these as files and pictures of golfers who take it outside the line and golfers who whip the club inside, like John Ray, Floyd Nancy Lopez, and there's just a ton of them. You see it less often now because more not because it makes you a better golfer to take it back a certain way. But everybody who is a good golfer right now has had some form of instruction, almost everybody, and the instruction is usually take it away

a certain way. So people mix up correlation and causation, right. They think, oh, all the good golfers have a certain takeaway, therefore putting me in a certain takeaway is going to make me a better golfer. It's like, no, it's a correlation. The reason why those good golfers have good takeaways is because they got taught that. If no one knew anything about what an optimal takeaway is. And by the way, I'm joking when I say optimal, there's no But if

no one knew. If you just got a bunch of golfers hitting balls on a desert island and they had no contact with the world, no understanding of what a good golf spring look like, you'd see a bunch of great golfers emerge, but they'd all have different takeaways. Very few. You'd have far few people with these textbook looking takeaways. And I used to see this actually when I worked

at IMG academies. You'd see kids from South America who had had learned golf themselves and they weren't they weren't formally instructed, but they were really good at the game. And they'd often get like mini scholarships to come over, and they'd all look like Jim Furick or Matt Wolf or you know, they'd all have these quirky movements in their swings, but they could they could break par they could shape it anyway you wanted them to. But their

swings didn't look textbook. And so that, you know, that was a big highlighting moment for me as well. And oftentimes when you made these swings more textbook, they didn't play well, they didn't play better.

they is too open to the path. Like yeah, people could say, oh, their path is off as well. It's like no, if you get the face closed enough to the path or less open to the bath in the slices case, the ball will land on the target. It may be a fade onto the target in the slices example. So you know someone's like slicing it off to the right. You close the face enough, it turns into a nice powerful fade that goes on the target. Now, could we turn that player into a drawer of the ball. Yes,

we could, but we don't have to necessarily. We just have to get the ball on the target, and plenty of pros fade the ball or in most cases, if you know, if they're above a five ten handicap, almost always it's a face strike and or a ground contact issue. And so I'm just looking at patterns there. Almost everybody has a pattern as well. So if the average golfer hits ten twenty balls, I can say to that person will on average, you're hitting it about it an inch fat.

If we move that ground contact an inch farther forwards, this will happen to the outcome. You'll get better distance control, better distance, and even more accuracy for free as well, because usually when we hit the ground earlier, it also affects the face angle, so it can it can make less consistency with direction as well.

of the ball. You can see toll heel, which tells us you know, to a heel the vertical contact. If it's too low on the face, it's obviously too high on the face is fat. If you hit it too high in the face. The only way to do that is to hit the ground early. So if you can manage to hit usually it's about between groove three and five, so we shoot for the fourth groove. If you can hit that, then you're golden. So that that's a replacement

for ground contact. Vertical okay contact for those of us who are pickers of the golf ball.

which is an internal thought. I'm thinking about my head position, which is an internal thought. I'm thinking about my right elbow position, my lead wrist, I'm thinking about my shoulder turn. All of these are body part focuses. Now, you ask that player what do you think of when you throw a ball into a bucket, or you just say them, you just say to them, or throw me your keys and they'll throw they'll throw your keys and you say

what what do you think about doing that? And they say, well, it's just just trying to get it in your hand. That's classed as an external focus of attention. It's outside of your body. I would class as an external result focus. So you're thinking about the end result. So a golf version of that would be thinking about the where the ball is finishing, or the shape of the ball, the trajectory of the ball, and so Yeah. Traditionally golf has always been taught. I would say ninety nine percent of

lessons are all internal. Very few lessons are externally focused. We actually in golf we have an intermediate step I call this external process. External process is basically what is the club doing? What is the club head doing specifically through impact. So for example of this would be if I ask a player to brush the grass, and then I say can you brush the top of the grass, can you brush the middle of the grass, can you brush the base of the grass. That's an external process result.

So it's not quite You're not quite thinking about what you want the ball to do. You're thinking about what you want the tool to do. And so these external focuses are I know this is not really a good definition, but more natural. The way I would say that is that's how we learn almost everything. That's how we learn to pick up a glass of water. It's how we learn to throw a ball towards someone. It's how we

learn to right. You don't learn the right by okay, I need to bend my wrist thirteen degrees this way. I need to keep pressure on this finger. I mean, at some point you think may be a part of that. We don't learn to walk by okay. I need to bend my leg this way. I need to swing this arm when my I need to swing my left arm where my right foot is going forwards. We just we make mistakes, right, We just watch someone, we copy it, and we make mistakes, and our body does what we

call self organizes. It figures out the movement patterns needed to achieve the task. And it's not to say that external sorry, it's not to say that internal focuses are bad. It's just that typically we don't learn most everyday tasks that way. Yet golf we spend all our time, well most golfers spend all our time learning that way. And there's scientifically, it's been studied quite a lot, the difference

between internal and external. And while I think there are some flaws in the studies, I think more research is needed. The studies are pretty solidly on external focuses winning. So if you give a hundred golfers and you see I want you to focus on shoulder turn, and you give another hundred golfers saying I want you to focus on brushing the grass, the grass brushers will win out in terms of how quick they learn, how fast they retain that learning, or you know, how much it is retained

over the course of sessions. How refers to real life situations like you put them on the golf course, so pressure situations, it maintains a lot better. And I've done some of these studies myself as well with with beginners with chipping, for example, I would set up a scenario where they have to chip over a bunker or to do a little pitch over a bunker, and I would ask these golfers, all right, I want you to focus on getting the ball up in the air and landing

on this spot. So it's a very externally focused external result focus. It's like where I want the ball to go. Then i'd ask the second set of golfers, I want you to focus on brushing the grass as close to the ball as you can, so all your focus is on that. And then ask a third set of golfers to I want you to focus on keeping your weight on your left side and like not getting your wrists to break down. You know, it's the typical of what most golfers. The weight is on their back foot and

they're trying to scoop it in the air. So more internally focused. So we actually test in three different types internal external pro says an external result, and with beginners, what I found was the internal focus was not very

good at all. In fact, there was often this conflict here because you would tell these players, right, you've got to keep your weight on your front foot, and they would go backwards, almost as if there's a lack of control there, like they can't control their body and you have to really get them to focus on it, and

it's almost like a conflict there. Now. The conflict I know is because these golfers are trying to get under the golf ball and lift it in there, because that's how a beginner thinks you get the ball in the air. So already there's like this idea that, oh, the body is actually trying to self organize for a concept. This person thinks they have to get under and scoop it, and so the emotion is doing exactly that. And when you try and force emotion on a bad concept, it

doesn't hold. So if you've ever tried to do something in your swing and it hasn't changed, and you're like, God, this is really difficult to change my swing, there may be a multi concept conflicting with what you're telling your body to do. Now. The second group performed the best in my studies. When I asked players to brush the ground in the right place. They were the ones who got the ball in the air and over the bunker.

And because that's what is required to get the ball up in the air, you brush the ground in the right place, it'll pop up in the air very easily. And the interesting thing I noted was with these players, when I was asking them to brush the ground in the right area, they started to move better. They started to put their weight on their left side without me telling them, without me even giving them those cues, the task created the better movement. So basically I changed their concept.

Instead of them now thinking I got to get under and scoop it, they're now focusing on the task is brushing the ground next to the ball, and as a result, the movement improved. Now the third group, the ones who are asked to focus on getting the ball up, so they're focusing on the trajectory of the ball where it landed, they performed awful as well. They started blading the balls in,

they started hitting the ground early. Why because when a beginner visualizes the ball going up in the air, they're going to go on their backfoot and try and scoop again. So again the visual there or the concept was self organizing a poor technique. It does flip for different players, though, when you get to a high level of golfer. Lots of high level golfers start to perform better when they focus on the outcome. The reason for that is they've

spent so many years in graining good mechanics. When they focus on the outcome, the mechanics are still there. So so yeah, I mean I think all of these focuses can be part of the process of learning. I think there's a time to be internal. I think there's a time to be externally process and a time to be externally result focused. I think all of them can be tools along someone's journey of improvement, and then you can even test them to say, hey, which one do you perform best with right now?

just the feel of it. I mean, is that, you know, and and and like you know, I when I get on the tee, I hit the ball a lot better if I just kind of do that like Ben Hogan thing he did on TV, you know, where you just kind of go back and forth like that changes everything about the way I wind up hitting the balls. So is it because it's a feel thing that people do well.

I don't say anything's good or bad. I say there are certain advantages to certain things and certain disadvantages to those same things. You know, I live by the mantra. There's no there are no solutions. There are only trade offs. I almost forgot Wars, and I'm like, oh, that's gonna sound stupid if I say I lived by this mantra and can't remember it. There are no solutions, only trade offs. Right. That's very true in golf, in golf instruction as well.

But yeah, you just have to find out what works for you. What I will say is that there are certain things that are definitely linked to the geometry of good golf. Okay, so if say, for example, if I get someone to brush the ground in the right area, that's linked to what's happening at impact, which makes the ball go up, which is good. If I say to hundred golfers, I need you to shift your weight forwards more in the swing. If I get those hundred golfers

actually do that, the ground contact will move forwards. So the movement is related to the geometry and that could either be good or bad for someone, depending on what they need. Then you have more I kind of call them voodoo golf or rain dance golf in that it's like you get golfers say things like, oh, when I put a T in my right pocket, play better. I mean, that's an extreme example to lay it point that. You know, these are things are less they may well produce better

outcomes for a golfer. You know, golfers might say things like, oh, I'm working on my rhythm or my tempo, and for that golfer in that moment, it may improve them. But I would be looking if that is true. I would

be looking at why is that golfer better? So what I would do with that golfer is I'd let them hit their bad shots and then they say, right, I perform best when I focus on rhythm, And I would say to the okay, hit ten shots for me focusing on rhythm, and at the end of those ten shots we get test results.

thinking of rhythm. We can see that your ground contact is not one inch behind, it's one inch in front. So at least then I'm linking that feel that they have to what's actually happening and what's actually causing the good shot. That's where I always want to get to, Yeah, causing the good shop.

when I tap, I got a food pellet. So what does it do It taps again, another food palette comes out. It may have nothing to do with the tap. They're random rewards, but now it's got two bits of information saying, oh, when I tapped twice, I get a food pellett. So you see again, tap twice, food palt come out. Bang, it's ingrained. Maybe then it taps twice and nothing happens.

It tries it again, nothing happens. It kind of turns around a little bit, and then all of a sudden, the food palette comes out, and the pigeon's brain is like, oh, if I tap twice and turn then a food pealet comes out. And then after a while these things get falsely linked. Golfers on a driving range matt are basically a pigeon in the skin of the experiment. What they do is they hit a ball, and their food pellett and golf our food pealettes are was it a good

shot or not? Did it feel good or not? Did it do what I wanted it to? So a player hits a shot and it's a bad one. They hit another shot, it's a bad one. They hit another shot and it's a good one. What does the person do? They say, Ah, what did I do differently on that one?

An example of that would be, and you know what, I don't think people normally arise to this thing themselves. I think normally they're told it by someone is head down, Oh, keep your head down. I see this all the time, maybe husbands teaching their wives, or men teach their fathers teaching their kids. The kid is like moving beautifully, their heads rotating nicely, they're springing up, they're moving like an athlete, and then all of a sudden, they hit a bad shot.

Even though they might have moved well, they hit a bad shot because maybe they hit it two grooves low on the face right, and it's it's And the dad says, oh, you've got to keep your head down. So the kid then tries to keep his head down. It's still a bad shot. He's like, more, keep your head down more. So the kid's now locked in place, their heads like

fixated on the ground. They make a swing, their entire arms collapse, their body doesn't rotate, and if they hit a good shot doing that, which you can you can make a horrible movement and hit a good shot. That kid is now locked in and now they're locked into making a bad movement, right, So then now their body is rotating and it can cause When I say a bad movement, I mean a movement that can cause injury.

It's gonna limit speed in the long term as a long term as well, so it just completely destroys the athleticism. So yeah, we got to be careful what we're linking up here. And to your question why the most golfers not improved is because they're just they're out there linking random things to the result and sometimes rarely they will link something good like I love it if a player went, oh, I shifted my weight more forwards and I hit the

ground better. That's a good linking, right, because that makes sense the midd links. But unfortunately, what I see I see I've seen a lot of golf. I've seen a lot of golf as a teacher is bad linking.

are the three most fundamental things in golf. If you do those three things, the outcome will be good. Even with a bad movement, the outcome will be good. The next stage to it is, okay, if you know what creates a good shot, do you know what you are doing in that? So, when I'm in a coaching session, when a player hits a bad shot, I as a coach, instantly looks at it and goes, oh, it was twenty millimeters off the toe. That's why I was a bad shot.

But I don't tell them that. I ask them, I say, why do you think that felt worse than the one before, which was a really good shot? Why do you think that? And they might not give me the right answer. They might they might say, oh, I don't know. Maybe the face was open. I don't know. And so I'm educating them to help them identify the actual issue and how they can do this themselves without my trained eyes. Foot

spray and ballflight will tell you almost everything. If you use foot spray and you see that the strike is vertically, it's say it's on the fourth groove, we know hit You've hit the ground pretty well. There's some caveats to that, but for most people, Okay, you've hit the ground pretty well. If it's on the fourth groove, if it's close to the center third of the face, you've struck it pretty well. Tone heel as well. How do we know if face is appropriate, the ball is going to go on the target?

Simple algorithm as if the ball goes too far right, the face has been too open. If all goes too far left, the face has been too closed, and you've got to try and balance that. You've got to try and balance that equation. So it's first, do we understand what creates a good shot? That's level one. Level two is do you know what you are doing? Are you getting good feedback on it? Level three is then, okay,

do you know how to change this? If you hit shots and you see, oh, they're all on the toe of the club, do you know how to move that more towards the heel, more dowards the center. And that's where we start building these tools. And so the simplest or yeah, it's simple, and probably the best tool you can develop is what I call the golden rule. Take the fault and try the opposite, which sounds so mind numbingly simple to people that most people have never tried it.

In fact, I get emails daily from people saying, you know what, I played years and I never tried just doing the opposite of my fault. So I had a guy maybe a couple of days ago, said, I suffered with shanks for almost a year. Now, I was almost quitting the game. I'm a three handicap and he said, I watched one of your social posts and it fixed it for me. And he said, all it was was I tried to hit out of the toe more. He said, it's so silly. I don't know why I've never tried

that before. No one teaches this. Why I just emailed back. I said, I don't know why people don't teach it because I see it work every single day, the amount of shank as I've had in my lesson tea where they're like, I'm on the verge of quitting. And I said, entertain me for a moment. Can you just try and hit a few shots out of the toe? And they try, and we look at the data and they say that's still a little heally, can you try and hit even

more out of the toe for me? And we try and I'm going it's better, but it's still not toey. I said, I want you to really toe at this time. I want you to hit the shiny part of the toe. And they go off and they hit ten shots and we have a look at it and they're like, wow, all of those were flushed, and I say, yeah, for the last thirty balls, you didn't hit one shank guy either. They're like, well, that's yeah, that's crazy. I didn't even

think about that. I'm like, yeah, you're literally just taking the fault heel and trying the opposite, trying to hit the toe, and it's improving the pattern. I see this in ninety nine percent of cases.

is pushing it right and slicing. And they show you, you know, all the data from the different clubs up there, and all of a sudden, I look and they're showing me where I'm hitting the ball with my driver, and every single ball I am hitting right off the toe basically, I mean I'm hitting right of you know what I mean, I'm hitting it, you know, a decent distance, and it's going straight, but slicinger going straight right, And all of a sudden, and I was like, God, well how do

I do this? And I was like, Oh, the simplest thing is why don't I try to hit it off the heel? Yeah, every time, And I've not hit a drive out of bounds since I've hit everything, and it's and I was like it could it possibly be that easy? Because I first I tried, I'm no.

actually the biggest change. Now, even with that, if you show someone shank, if you show a video of someone hitting a shank and someone hitting a flush shot, only the most trained eyes will be able to see the difference between those. Now we can see the difference in the result. Right, A flush shot flies long, far goes relatively towards the target. Shank shoots ninety degrees. Right, we assume because the result has been so drastically different, that

we have done something so drastically different. We haven't. It's a lie, it's a myth. One of the best tests that your listeners can do is to go off and video this wing and wait for a good shot, and when they do that, put a thumbs up to the camera. Then keep hitting, wait for a bad shot, put a thumbs down, and go off and analyze those two just so you can when you're scrolling through, yoh, that one's the good one, that one was the bad one. With the thumbs up the thing, and then go and video

them side by side. If you have that ability, you will not see the difference between them. Because it's an inch in It can be less than that. I mean, honestly, a difference between a shank and someone hitting an okay shot out of the heel, it's like a quarter of an inch really right right now, it gets even more, it gets even smaller with the differences. When we're talking about things like direction. So when you slice a driver forty yards right, and this is undeniable because we have

launch monitors showing this. Now, when you slice a driver forty yards right, the club face has been three degrees more open than the one that was piped on the center. So imagine you hit two shots right, pipe one down the center, next one goes forty yards right. You go into the launch monitor data, you have a look, and what you see is, oh, the club face was three degrees more open. Now three degrees It is half a

second on a clock face. It's nothing. In fact, I have visuals images that I post on social media a lot of a square face and one that's three degrees open. People look at it and they go, god, I had to really look at that to see if there's a difference there. And that's the difference between thirty yards more right at about two hundred and fifty two hundred and sixty yards. Even if you only hit it two hundred yards, it's still like thirty yards right.

try and make the change. I've had people hitting forty yards right, forty yards right, forty yards right, and I say, right, try and close the face for me, and it's twenty yards right, thirty yards right, ten yards right, and they're like, I'm really trying to do this year And we go into a launch monitor and say, well, you're moving it in the right direction, but you're only one degree more closed, and they could they go, wow, it felt like I was closing it ten degrees right.

a task and they underdo it. Kids are overdoers. You ask kids to close the face and they'll sl lamate shut and hit it forty yards left off the planet. So kids, you have to be more careful and not careful, but you have to tell them to make smaller changes. Adults you could really are going to get in there and kick them to make a proper change often. But yeah, so three degrees can be the difference between a successful

shot and a non successful shot. Half an inch an inch on the face can be the difference between a shank and one that's flush with ground contact, It's even scarier one groove of height change. So a player hits the fourth groove flush, next shot, they hit the sixth groove. So as let's say two shots higher on the face and they laid the sod over it, right, that's the

difference we're looking at there. Pros have unbelievable depth control. Okay, what I mean by that is if I ask a if I ask a pro to brush the top of the ground, and they will be able to control the depth very very well. In fact, I used to do these little drills with players where I would get a towel and I would put a bottle cap on top of it, and I'd say, right, I want you to

practice clipping the bottle cap off without moving the towel. Right, So imagine if you swing a little too high, you miss the bottle cap, you swing a little bit too low, the towel bunches and flies out everywhere. A progue can stand and do that drill all day. I can put one of those little thin bottle caps, the water bottle caps like a desani, and they'll do it all day. And then you get amateur and they're not very good all at all. Well, actually I say they're not very

good at it. They're good, just not as good as a pro. And like I said, the difference there between the difference between a pro level control is a pro has about a three millimeter standard deviation, right, which is about a one groove standard deviation. With a bad golfer, it's about a one and a half to two groove standard deviation right right. On the one hand, you could say, oh, it's not that different, is it. It's one groove difference huge.

The other hand, you could say, well, that's actually fifty two one hundred percent worse. So you know, twice as twice the standard deviation is more pro. But so on the one hand, you can say, oh, god, yeah, I am bad at it if I've got two group standard deviation. But on the other hand, you could look at it and say, well, hey, I'm not actually that far off from a pro. It's just they're doing these little things

really really well. And my life has been spent teaching people how do we do these little things really really well?

You've learned something. You've learned that you are more heel biased with everything you may learn they're actually pretty good at it. Oh when I try and hit ten from the toe, I'm quite good at it, And ten from the heel, I'm quite good at it. Maybe I should focus on this a little bit more. You're going to learn something from the task. Try and hit ten shots a little higher on the face by digging in a

little deeper. Just say yourself, R, I'm really going to thump and dig in a little on the mat here, hit them high on the face. Then try and say, right, I'm just gonna pick it off the surface. I'm gonna imagine the ground is glass and I'm just gonna imagine picking the ball off the surface without smashing the glass. You'll hit it lower on the face. Then try and go somewhere in between with them. So with both of those tasks, ten off the toe, ten off the heel.

Now try in between ten high on the face, ten low on the face. Now try in between, try and hit ten shots left, try and hit ten shots right, then do in between. You will learn so much from that and just understand the concept that face orientation is going to be the biggest determinant of whether the ball goes right or left. So by just doing those two are those three tasks you're you're learning so much with that with.

I can tell their ability. Very high skilled players can move it, and they can move it in specific amounts as well, so you can scale the task if you want to. So instead of just going left and right, I might say to a player hit a small left, a medium left, a big left. So we're now layering more parts to this task here. If a player can't do a task, like say I'm asking a lifelong slicer, can you close the face down and hit it left? And they just they try and after twenty shots they can't.

We may then go into well, let's look at what there is technically that may be limiting your ability to do it, and we would say, okay, you've got a really weak grip. Let's put your grip in a stronger position and now try the task again. So again that's an internal focus. I'm not anti internal Changing your grip is a mechanical thing, but that might help them to achieve the task. Now, So technique for me, when I'm changing techniques with players, it's all task related. It's like, right,

what task does this player struggle with? What technical things can we add to them to help them with that. So say, for example, someone stands quite far away from it, like Bryson de Shambeau, if they're hitting the sweet spot all the time, I'm like, hey, you keep doing that, that's fine, I'm okay with that. Bryson does it? MO normal used to do it. Yeah, there are many color

players who do it, but that's okay. But if that player says I'm hitting everything out of the toe, my first thing would be, well, let's see if you can hit out the heel. And usually in that first round they start to naturally stand a little closer to it, so I don't have to tell them they move closer. They naturally do it. But if they don't, then they

can't hit the heel. Then I might suggest to them, hey, what about standing a little closer to it and then seeing if you can do this heel task And they're like, oh, yeah, that was a lot easier now. So the movement doesn't have to become more textbook, but we can use that as a tool if a player is struggling with a task. If they don't struggle with the task, we don't need to change it. I've got players with weak grips who

hit straight shots. I don't need that grip to move to a more neutral position if they're hitting straight shots with it. Because there are plenty of top players of weak grips. Bryson is one, more Coauer is one, and there are plenty of players with strong grips Dustin Johnson is one, Paul Asingo is won, David Duval was one. Web Simpson was strong grip. I need not any motion, but there are a wider range of motions and grips

and setups that can work. Then you would be led to believe all you have to do is to be able to do the task of impact. And if you can't do the task of impact, we could use technique changes to help us with the task of impact, but it all comes down to the task of impact.

was hooking the ball. So we're all trying to adapt to a swing that one of the great players of all time had created because he was hooking right to some extent, and with more Norman it's like amazing, but it's I've tried it and I cannot very homegrown.

calories were controlled. That is analogous to impact. If you get the calories right, you will lose weight. If you get impact right, you will lose weight. What you have to find out is, well, what method is right for me to achieve a calorie deficit. So for some people that might be low carb, they might try low carb and they might say, ah, this is easy for me to get low calories. That's the equivalent of someone saying, oh, I tried the most Norman swing and it got my

impact better. But other people might try low carb and they're like, oh God, if you're awful on this and I can't stop, I get cravings and I overeat, which is basically them try and more Norman swing and being like, I can't get a task of impact. Here's that right? What's the one of the true fundamentals of dieting or golf golf. It's impact the method. There are a million methods that work, there are a million diets that work right, but do you have to abide by the principle of

impact or calorie control. So I don't want to go too far off on the announced, No, but I.

what the effects would be on the health. And yeah, there are certain ways of achieving impact that might not be really optimal, but if you achieve impact, you'll get the result. Right, So this is where you can get You can use a coach to help you. You know, like I said, you don't. You don't want to use a super weak grip and I hit the ground early to close the face. That's not it's in effect, you're

actually getting one of the impact tasks. Incorrect anyway. So but yeah, in terms of choosing a model, I think you have I think we have it the wrong way around. I think we should focus more on what what is the task? Am I achieving that? And then we can pick and choose from models. So I'm model like not agnostic. What I say is is if someone struggles to close the face, I can draw upon different models or just

understanding of how different movements affect the face. Well, I know that if I get a hundred golfers and I give them a stronger grip position which means hands turn more to the right, those hundred golfers on average will close the face more. So we can say, okay, there's an overarching rule. Stronger grip tends tends to close the face for golfers. Similarly, if you get a hundred golfers and you add more forearm rotation through impact of course supernation,

they will close the face more. If you get a hundred golfers and you cup the wrist more at the top of the swing, go into extension leader's extension, they will tend to open the face more so, or vice versa. They'll tend to close if they're more flexed or bode with the wrist. So that's a kind of complicated one, definitely, but it's an option for me. So say I player is like, I'm hitting everything right. So okay, well, we know the face is too open to the path. What

are our options here? While we could strengthen the grid position, we could add more supernation at the bottom, we could add more lead reflection. I could just give a player the task of can you close the face of impact? And maybe they self organize different wrist angles without me telling them to. So there's lots of ways of AI achieving this goal, but it's all centered on the task of impact. Models and swing pieces are just ways of helping us achieve that.

people want, like really structured plans. This thing like the strike plan helps you with ground contact and face contact. The accuracy plan helps you with directional issues. So everybody has both to get both if you want, or if there's just one one issue, just get the one that's most pertinent to you.